Food insecurity and malnutrition in older adults from the Family Health Strategy in the Northeast of Brazil

Introduction: Food insecurity (FI) is a state characterized by instability and irregularity of access to food. This condition has negative impacts on dietary intake, affecting nutritional status and health condition. Objective: To evaluate the association between malnutrition and FI among communitydwelling older adults attended to under the Family Health Strategy (FHS). Materials and methods: This is a cross-sectional study conducted using communitydwelling older adults attended to under the FHS in the municipality of Barreiras, in Bahia, Brazil. Between 2017 e 2018, we collected demographic, social, economic, health condition, lifestyle, anthropometric, and food consumption data. We evaluated nutritional status using the Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) and we assessed FI with the Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale (EBIA). Besides the chi-squared test, we carried out a binary logistic regression to verify the association between malnutrition and FI, adjusted for possible confounding factors. The significance level was p